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Shares in Pumpkin Patch have soared since Kathmandu founder Jan Cameron increased her stake in the children's clothing retailer.
The move, which was announced to the market on Friday, has pushed the share price off a low of $1.40 to a closing price yesterday of $1.52, up 8.5 per cent in two days of trading.
Cameron now has 6.3 per cent of the company. She is following in the steps of retail king Rod Duke, who last month took his family trust's stake in Pumpkin Patch to 9.38 per cent.
The spectacular reversal in the share price has prompted takeover speculation, but market commentators say it remains merely supposition.
Hamilton Hindin Greene client adviser James Smalley said the price movements were on very light volumes, although larger individual buy orders of around 10,000 to 15,000 shares had started coming through.
He said Cameron's move had certainly sparked more buying interest from retail investors, especially since it came on the heels of Briscoe Group's Duke. "It's a couple of ticks in the plus column for people."
But her purchase also helped the stock in another way.
"Her buying that rather large stake maybe removed a lot of selling pressure off the stock. Major holders would've been able to sell to her, who otherwise might've had to sell stock on the market, which would obviously depress the price."
Talk of a takeover because of the company's low share price was just speculation, Smalley said.
"There's always that potential, I guess. You can never rule it out, but I think this is just more from some fairly canny retail investors thinking that the stock's just a bit oversold."
One market commentator said that on a rolling year basis, Pumpkin Patch was down almost 75 per cent, against the NZX-50 gross index's decline of almost 30 per cent.
"You definitely have to put it in perspective on where it comes from. The market is down, but this has fallen a long, long way."
Cameron, who made her money selling outdoor clothing retailer Kathmandu for about $275 million in 2006, has been on a spending spree since September last year when she began slowly upping her stake in Postie Plus from around 8 per cent to its present 15.096 per cent.
Last month she reached a deal to buy Postie's Arbuckle business for an undisclosed sum. She also has homeware stores trading under the name Nood.
